I know The Elder Scrolls series has been criticized for favoring player freedom over a sense of urgency. But if this is what needs to happen to create a sense of urgency-FUCk THAT!

I'm willing to suspend my disbelief in exchange for being able to do whatever the fuck I want. PERIOD.

It was one thing when the "time limit" was me recruiting the first three squad members-now it's just completing a certain number of missions-hell, I have a feeling that even the DLC missions counted against me. WTF?!

I know, I'm just really spoiled by Bethesda's games but I just really feel like getting this off my chest. I only hope that after this next story mission I'll be able to go back and do most of the side missions I've got pending.

Here's another thing-just so I can't be called a hypocrite. In games like Morrowind I think it's okay to have diverging paths that rule each other out. But it's different because the game is so open and allows so many choices that multiple playthroughs can lead to entirely different experiences. Beyond that I could create a new character expressly for the purpose of joining a different house-I don't have to go through a bunch of unrelated quests just to get a different quest line.

Sure I could use saves to go back and do different missions but why should I HAVE to do that?! On top of that being unable to name my saves is a hindrance (can't remember if I can name saves in the PC version-but seeing as I'm playing the 360 version atm that's not an option anyway).

Again, I just feel a need to rant about this because it really pisses me off, especially in this game that I'm otherwise enjoying quite a bit.

What the hell is wrong with that? You just have to do that one mission (I guess you are talking about Horizon or Collector Ship here), then you'll be free again to do whatever you desire.Besides, this isn't Morrowind or Skyrim. This is Mass Effect. Mass Effect is a linear game. And the way it processes through the story is very unique, and if you aren't comfortable with it, then well, yeah.Just my opinion though. There's really no need to go spreadin' it around. (See what I did there? ) Sorry if that sounded harsh, but you know how that is with my fanboy attitude, though you were kind of pushing the feedback)

Finally beat the game-now I just need to figure out how to get enough money to buy Mass Effect 3 as soon as possible.

I actually now have a bit of a problem with the point between the Collector Ship and the Derelict Reaper-you have UNLIMITED TIME (as far as I can tell) to do whatever you want and basically get 100% completion (more or less). This is nice, but feels like everything is falling over to the opposite extreme.

I'm still more pissed off at the lack of freedom in those two earlier stages but now even more so because they turn around and give you unlimited time afterwards. You could say there's no satisfying me-I suppose it helps me to "pace myself" when doing side-quests and the like and when I play through the game again at some point in the future I'll probably not be quite as mad about the whole thing.

The one thing that really still pisses me off are the two "flying" enemies in the game-they both feel insanely cheap-if only because I have to totally change my strategy when fighting them and I die...a lot.

Lastly, here's a list of major achievements I got on my first playthrough (albeit on the easiest difficulty-HEY, I'm a casual gamer! Don't judge me!):

Power Gamer: Reach Level 30 with one character.

Big Game Hunter: Defeat the thresher maw.

Long Service Medal: Complete Mass Effect twice, or complete it once with a character imported from Mass Effect 1 (apparently the Genesis DLC counts as an "imported character"-just as well since I replicated most of the choices I made in the PC version).

No One Left Behind: Keep your team alive through the suicide mission.

Against All Odds: Survive suicide mission.

I've also beaten all the DLC and I think I've also cataloged every single planet in the game. There doesn't appear to be an achievement for that, but it's understandable I suppose because of all the DLC.

Only reason I'd go through and replay ME2 right now would be to romance the Yeoman. Sucks that the game won't let me romance more than one person in a single playthrough.

One other slight complaint-the final boss was cool and epic but kind of a pushover.

Anyway, really liked the game-might go back and try to play ME1 since I've got it downloaded through Games on Demand.

I got the "blue" ending, btw.

Edit: Wait a second...just talked to a few people and suddenly have a certain "private message" on my terminal. Might not have to replay the whole game after all.

My character romanced both Yeoman and Garrus in her runthrough. I was playing on hardcore as a Vanguard. That shit was excruciating fun! When I finally remembered to get charge, I was actually capable of using that in my strategies. My current ME3 playthrough is the same character on Insanity. But since I already finished the game with her once, my current ME2 playthrough has a pleasantly renegade Assassin.

The reason they screwed up on the ending was because they were flipflopping around on what they could do for way too long. When it came time to implement things, they couldnt get it all done and the time crunch killed them. This is basically why they screwed up.

Tarius: I have now conquered the galaxy twice and am working on a third. Once thats out of me, I will be back to work.TDF: Which game is that(I assume its a game and not real life)The Khan: If it was real life, we would know about it. And I dont think he means this Galaxy.Tarius: Yes, I really lead a secret double life where I am a galactic overlord.

That still doesn't mean that the concept of Shepard being Indoctrinated wasn't one of the things they considered.

As I said in my blog entry regarding the ending, even IF we're supposed to interpret the ending as being a result of Shepard being Indoctrinated, it's still poorly handled in a number of respects.

If you want the Indoctrination Theory video, you'll see that it's not only based on "filling in" plot holes, but there are a number of visual indicators as well in the way the ending was presented.

So what I'm getting is perhaps they weren't sure how to present the idea of Shepard being indoctrinated, or if s/he'd be indoctrinated at all-and by the time they sorted something out they were running out of time and sort of half-assed it.

I'm not saying Indoctrination Theory is true, I'm just saying there's still a good chance it might be.

There is only a good chance its true if they have latched on to it after the fact.The problem still is as I said, they flipflopped around and couldnt get stuff done in time and screwed up.That they didnt have something ready to go in a month or two after the release also says that this isnt what they intended because they could have started immediatly working on it once the final product was shipped out to the CD factories.I have seen some of the indoctrination stuff and quite a bit of what I saw struck me as crafted by unimaginative people grasping at straws.

Tarius: I have now conquered the galaxy twice and am working on a third. Once thats out of me, I will be back to work.TDF: Which game is that(I assume its a game and not real life)The Khan: If it was real life, we would know about it. And I dont think he means this Galaxy.Tarius: Yes, I really lead a secret double life where I am a galactic overlord.

Tarius wrote:There is only a good chance its true if they have latched on to it after the fact.The problem still is as I said, they flipflopped around and couldnt get stuff done in time and screwed up.That they didnt have something ready to go in a month or two after the release also says that this isnt what they intended because they could have started immediatly working on it once the final product was shipped out to the CD factories.I have seen some of the indoctrination stuff and quite a bit of what I saw struck me as crafted by unimaginative people grasping at straws.

Well I imagine they were focusing more on fixing any lingering bugs than fixing the ending. That and maybe they were trying to get "From Ashes" done. :p

The ending as it was I felt was actually not very bad-there's a bit of suspension of disbelief but when you consider that Shepard seems to have been "knocked out" by the Reaper's beam, that could have given Anderson some time to have run ahead. Even with everything else the plot holes didn't feel big enough to really bother me.

I said this in the shout box a ways back but I think you need to understand the amount of work that needs to go into something like this.- They have to call back some of the voice actors, many of whom are major Hollywood talent with schedules that need to be worked around. It also seems they're going to add some post-ending content to give us a better idea of what happens to our favorite characters afterwards-which means brand new cut scenes to write and put together.

I think the whole concept of Shepard becoming, or rather the Reapers attempting to Indoctrinate Shepard may have been something they weren't quite sure how to present to players. They had to find a balance were it wasn't too blatant and obvious but not so subtle that it went over everyone's head. Unfortunately if the theory IS true, it seems it went in the latter direction-perhaps BECAUSE they waited until the very last minute to work out the details.

Also, if Indoctrination Theory is true it still leaves a number of questions-especially in regards to which elements of the ending were and were not "real". Were all synthetics really wiped out? The fact that we can still see Shepard breathe and the fact that if I recall correctly we can still see EDI emerging from the ship at the end might suggest that the "Catalyst Child" was lying-or EDI's potential appearance was simply an oversight and Shepard's breath (which also if I recall correctly will only happen after a "red ending") happens because s/he's only half-synthetic, and the human half is strong enough to survive somehow.

I don't like to think they were entirely incompetent, and that their use of works like "artistic vision" and "adding clarity" seem to suggest that they did in fact have a deeper concept involved-but weren't able to get it across as effectively as they should have for various reasons.

DJGamer wrote:Also, if Indoctrination Theory is true it still leaves a number of questions-especially in regards to which elements of the ending were and were not "real". Were all synthetics really wiped out? The fact that we can still see Shepard breathe and the fact that if I recall correctly we can still see EDI emerging from the ship at the end might suggest that the "Catalyst Child" was lying-or EDI's potential appearance was simply an oversight and Shepard's breath (which also if I recall correctly will only happen after a "red ending") happens because s/he's only half-synthetic, and the human half is strong enough to survive somehow.

I don't want to be rude... but, this paragraph here makes little sense. IF the IT is true (that's what you are saying) then how can you discuss why Shepard survived the destruction of synthetics? THEY WERE NEVER DESTROYED! Neither were the Reapers. That's the point. Everything that happens after the beam hits Shepard is to be completely ignored in terms of logic. EDI's appearance is irrelevant as it's crafted by Harbinger to make Shepard believe everything went alright.

Btw, some of you might know they worked on "From Ashes" for the last month before the release of Mass Effect 3. They did never run out of time as the dlc was somehow already "included" with every ME3 copy and just "unlocked" as you bought the dlc. (That said, I don't doubt Tarius has a buddy over there at BW but I am not sure if what he said was 100% accurate.)

What I mean to say is that it's still slightly unclear how much of the "choice" is Indoctrination and how much is meant to be taken literally. That said, if Shepard IS being Indoctrinated then it's more likely that the Reapers are just making shit up to convince Shepard NOT to destroy them.

From what I have heard From Ashes was not strictly "on-disc DLC", but rather something that was incomplete when the game went gold. Judging from the file size (628.18 MB) I'd also imagine that very little of it was actually on-disc.

I'm not sure if I mentioned my thoughts yet on From Ashes in this thread. I felt that in a number of ways it was an improvement from Kasumi as Javik is a fully integrated and fleshed-out character whom feels no different from an average squad member. He has occasionally branched conversations with the player and will sometimes be seen conversing with other members of the crew.

That said, the included mission to recruit him is a great deal more straight forward than Kasumi's. You could say it all balances out in such a way that the value should be more equal rather than costing roughly $3 more.

Also, from my research I've discovered that the downloadable data from the Kasumi DLC is actually larger than From Ashes (764.84 MB)-though there's no telling how much of FA might have already been on-disc (though I'm sure someone's hacked into the data and some point to figure that out).

Anyway, I doubt Bioware or ESPECIALLY EA will change the pricing point for it any time soon so it ultimately doesn't matter.

If it isn't already obvious I tend to try to take a sort of neutral stance on most issues. This can either have the result of bring people on either side understand each other better or I just piss off both parties because I don't appear to fully agree with either of their points of view. lol

DJGamer wrote:Also, if Indoctrination Theory is true it still leaves a number of questions-especially in regards to which elements of the ending were and were not "real". Were all synthetics really wiped out? The fact that we can still see Shepard breathe and the fact that if I recall correctly we can still see EDI emerging from the ship at the end might suggest that the "Catalyst Child" was lying-or EDI's potential appearance was simply an oversight and Shepard's breath (which also if I recall correctly will only happen after a "red ending") happens because s/he's only half-synthetic, and the human half is strong enough to survive somehow.

I don't want to be rude... but, this paragraph here makes little sense. IF the IT is true (that's what you are saying) then how can you discuss why Shepard survived the destruction of synthetics? THEY WERE NEVER DESTROYED! Neither were the Reapers. That's the point. Everything that happens after the beam hits Shepard is to be completely ignored in terms of logic. EDI's appearance is irrelevant as it's crafted by Harbinger to make Shepard believe everything went alright.

Btw, some of you might know they worked on "From Ashes" for the last month before the release of Mass Effect 3. They did never run out of time as the dlc was somehow already "included" with every ME3 copy and just "unlocked" as you bought the dlc. (That said, I don't doubt Tarius has a buddy over there at BW but I am not sure if what he said was 100% accurate.)

Yes indeed, the From Ashes content was already on the disk, but only a part of it. The character and basic stuff like that, the mission and dialogue was not.As for accuracy, this person isnt on the Mass Effect team unfortunatly(they are on the Dragon Age team), but is certainly more on point than all the speculation I have seen flung around. I will not be saying anything in regards to specific traits on this person as I have no need to get them in trouble.

DJ ninjed me.

Tarius: I have now conquered the galaxy twice and am working on a third. Once thats out of me, I will be back to work.TDF: Which game is that(I assume its a game and not real life)The Khan: If it was real life, we would know about it. And I dont think he means this Galaxy.Tarius: Yes, I really lead a secret double life where I am a galactic overlord.

DJGamer wrote:I'm not sure if I mentioned my thoughts yet on From Ashes in this thread. I felt that in a number of ways it was an improvement from Kasumi as Javik is a fully integrated and fleshed-out character whom feels no different from an average squad member. He has occasionally branched conversations with the player and will sometimes be seen conversing with other members of the crew.

Shall I state my opinion, too? I hate the dlc.

The mission... horrible. You arrive on Eden Prime, first thing you encounter is him. WTF? I thought it'd be some cool Prothean Ruin stuff where you'd fight through waves of Cerberus Agents and at the end you get to find Javik. Instead, I found him right at the beginning and had to find some silly stuff to open the coffin, what the hell. The whole mission was also just plain boring.Then, the character. No. I mean, no. This is definitely not the way I imagined he would talk like and the whole point of the Protheans was generally destroyed by including this one Prothean. I actually liked not knowing a lot about the Protheans, apart from what I saw in the beacons. And I really expected more from that character.